Joshua Mohr - Some Things That Meant the World to Me

I stood on the chair, picking the last flecks of nest off the beam. I didn't want to go back inside without being stung. Then I felt the glorious pinprick of a wasp. On the back of my neck. Immediately, it happened again: the racing heart, the tight throat, skin going all scratchy, splotchy.

I hopped off the chair and said, "Mom! Help!"

I stood there and said, "Mom! A wasp! Help!"

I stood there and I got all dizzy from the sting and my throat was tighter than normal. I could barely breathe. My skin was itchier than the other times, felt like rusty forks were scraping all over my body, almost drawing blood.

I said, "Mom! Help me!"

I ran inside, thinking maybe she couldn't hear, but she was right there, in the kitchen, leaning on a Joshua tree.

"I got stung again."

She didn't say anything, moving away from the tree and trying to get more tcha-bliss from the box by tilting it forward, but only a few drops dripped into her glass. She didn't look at me. She shook the box, but no more wine dribbled out. She finished it in a sip.

"Wet a rag and dab it," she said.

"But it stung me on the back of the neck. I can't reach."

"This is the third time."

"I need your help."

She sighed, held her glass under the box's spout again and started shaking the box around as hard as she could. Nothing came out. Then she threw the box against the wall and it landed in the sand, fire ants crawling all over it.

"Bring me the damn rag," she said.

I should have known better than to try new things. But I'd convinced myself that old lady Rhonda was right, and I should ask out Handa. So I shaved and showered. I listened to littleRhonda say, "What's going to happen if she sees you with your pants off? Don't you think she might notice you're not exactly Magnum material?"

"You're not helping," I said.

"No, but I'm having a great time."

And despite his wisecracks, I was having a great time, too. I had little-Rhonda and old lady Rhonda and the bag of pruno. I guess, I had Vern, too, though I didn't count him as much a part of my family because I never knew what to expect from him. One minute, he watched me have my arm broken by a cue stick and didn't do anything to help; the next, he gave me the recipe for prison wine.

If I told you I'd named the pruno, would you judge me?

Would you think I was ludicrous?

Well, I named it. Madeline.

I loved having her lie by my bed. I'd see her and I'd think to myself: you are the only person I've ever really taken care of.

Little-Rhonda walked with me down Valencia, on our way to Handa's liquor store. A huge stretch of road had been closed — 18th to 22nd Street — and stripped clean of all its asphalt, a barren stretch of dirt. Down the middle of the road, the workers and their machines had dug huge trenches and now guided dangling pipes into the ground, slowly being lowered by thick chains.

I kept trying to send the little fellow back home, but he wouldn't listen. "Do you think you'll smooch her?" he said, snickering.

"Stop it."

"Don't be so sensitive. I'm here for moral support. We both are," he said, and a sidewinder slithered up and sat on his shoulder like a pirate's parrot.

"I don't need your help."

He launched into a vulgar laugh, snorting, flipping his helmet's light off and on as fast as he could. The sidewinder purred. Little-Rhonda said, "You need help like a hobo needs a candied ham."

And then we were right across the street from the liquor store; Handa stood in the doorway, smoking, waving at us.

"Any last words of encouragement?" I said to little-Rhonda, but he was gone.

Halfway across the street, I looked up at the palm trees that ran down the middle of Dolores Street, in a median of dried grass. Wind whipped through their fronds. There was a highchair knocked on its side, sitting beneath one of the hissing trees.

"That arm, Big Boy. Does it hurt?" Handa yelled to me.

I didn't know what to say. It was uncomfortable and I couldn't really move my fingers and I was still adjusting to the little things, like tying my shoes and using a can opener. But the swarming, sizzling wav my hand used to feel had vanished since the arm had been broken. Now my hands were opposites of each other: one always feeling, always thrumming; the other one, dead to the world.

I walked up, admiring her curves. "It's not so bad."

"No?"

"It comes in handy. Patting myself on the back."

"That would be nice." She ground out her smoke, leaned down, and picked up the butt, carrying it back in the store. I followed her. Like always, she had about an inch of skin showing between her pants and her shirt. I envied the dark hairs stretching out of the skin above her ass, imagining what it would be like to be a drop of sweat, clinging in that field of lovely hairs.

She sauntered behind the counter. I got as close to my side of it as I could.

"Do you have a date tonight?" she said, turning her body and reaching for the Magnums.

"No," I said, "I came to see you"

"Me?"

We stood there and nothing was going to stop me. Her hand fell away from the condoms.

"What's new?" I said.

Her face lit up. "Hector is new"

"Who's Hector?"

"I've got a new boyfriend. Now you're not the only one having all the good times."

Maybe it was time to accept the fact that all the great codes of the universe were conspiring against me. My good hand went nuts, a hive writhing with angry life.

"Hector is like you," she said.

"What?"

"I shouldn't be telling you this," she said, giggling, "but he's a big boy, too."

I wasn't trying to yell. I hope you know that. My hand had harsh explosions, and suddenly my thoughts were too loud, swelling to gigantic sound waves, my thoughts shouted themselves around my head, like a bat bouncing its sonar off of cave walls. I'm trying to tell you that the noise in my head blared and I yelled to hear myself but I wasn't yelling at her, okay?

"I have to go!" I said.

She cringed, stepped back. "See you next time."

I wasn't trying to yell at her, but my lungs, hanging pink and wet and bloated in my chest like freshly skinned animals, kept filling with huge amounts of air, and shoving massive noises out of me. "I just remembered I'm supposed to meet a friend! I have to leave right now!"

"See you later."

And she had Hector, and I had no one, and I didn't want her to think that I had no one, so I said, "I better get some Magnums just in case! You never know! Have a great day!"

"You, too," she said and rung up the rubbers.

I paid her. I was only trying to hear what I was saying. Nothing more. I would never have intentionally screamed at her. You need to know that. I said, "Thanks!" and walked away fast, rounding the corner, and as soon as I was out of her sight, I took off running to Damascus, only stopping at a trashcan to throw away the condoms.

I ran down Dolores to 20th Street, took a right. Hit Valencia, passing over the dirt trenches on a piece of plywood the construction crew had laid out at the crosswalk for pedestrians and sprinted by La Rondalla, which already smelled like grease and enchilada sauce and they weren't even open yet. Moved across Mission, South Van Ness, Folsom. It was early afternoon. The wind still clipped through the neighborhood, and I saw a toddler walking and holding onto his mother's leg, steadying himself from blowing around the sidewalk like a downed kite.